The results from our IV estimations indicate that both shock types significantly and positively impact pesticide use.Notably, farmers who experience shocks are more likely to use up to 30% more pesticides than non-shock households.Furthermore, pests and diseases also have a significant and positive impact on fertilizer use with the same magnitude.In other words, these types of shocks are forcing farmers to use more these inputs.Therefore, stronger support from public services such as more efficient weather forecasts and local extensions in crop production are important to reduce the uncertainties in rural regions.In addition, providing a mechanism of crop production insurance to prevent adverse impacts of shocks might discourage farmers from overusing chemical inputs.The IV fixed-effects estimations also show that households belonging to the Thai majority appear to use more inputs than minorities.This finding is in line with a case study in Vietnam that differences in ethnic groups are more likely to affect the application of production inputs due to their different farming practices and levels of wealth.Further, the results show that farmers having more agricultural equipment and transportation vehicles such as sprayers, motorcycles, and trucks tend to use more pesticides, which may be due to affordability to purchase or the ability to transport the inputs.
For fertilizers, farmers with a higher education level, a longer distance to their land plots, dutch buckets more motorcycles appear to use more fertilizers, while those with a higher dependency ratio and larger farmland tend to use less fertilizers.The variable of asset poor shows an insignificant effect on input use.To acquire the farming efficiency, we estimate the translog true random-effects stochastic production frontier function with Mundlak’s adjustments.Table 4 stacks the brief results of the estimation.Most of the mean variables of CRE show a statistical significance implying the presence of time-invariant unobservable characteristic effects.Only five variables of inputs show a significant effect.This indicates the less intensive level of rice production in Thailand, compared with some competing countries such as Vietnam.The results also indicate that fertilizer is the most important input.Fig.2 shows the distribution of predicted farming efficiency scores.The mean score was 0.64 in 2013 and 0.70 in 2017, the vast majority of the households have a farming efficiency score higher than 0.50, and less than 3% of the households have an efficiency score higher than 0.90.The mean efficiency score of our estimation is slightly higher than the score of rice farmers in Thailand, lower than Vietnam and of 0.85 from Huy and Nguyen, and higher than the scores of rice farmers in Cambodia and in Bangladesh.In our result, the mean score of shock households appears to be lower than that of households in the non-shock group in 2013 and 2017.Table 5 presents the effects of farmers’ risk attitudes and shocks on technical efficiency in rice production and shows that farmers’ willingness to take risks has a positive and significant effect on farming efficiency.This finding further suggests that higher risk-averse farmers are applying more fertilizers and pesticides, and this inefficient use of inputs causes farming inefficiency in their production.In addition, the result from IV fixed-effects estimations by groups of farmers’ risk attitudes shows that households belonging to the risk-averse group appear to have lower farming efficiency.This confirms that more risk-averse farmers are inefficiently using chemical inputs, and this improper application leads to lower farming efficiency.Our findings support the conclusion that rural households’ behavior under risk might explain low agricultural productivity and vicious cycles of poverty in developing countries because these inputs account for a high proportion of production costs.
We run additional estimations with lagged values of attitudes as robustness checks.The results remain consistent.Unsurprisingly, weather shocks significantly and negatively affect rice technical efficiency, while pests and diseases show an insignificant influence in all IV fixed-effects estimations.Regarding the weather shocks, the result is related to the findings of Mishra et al.and Mishra et al.that weather shocks are a major reason affecting agricultural inefficiency in Cambodia and Bangladesh, respectively.This emphasizes the impacts of weather shocks on agricultural production in developing countries and urges governments to support rural households to cope with weather shocks, especially in the context of climate change that causes more frequent extreme weather events.The extensive and improper use of chemical inputs in agriculture has triggered various non-point source pollution and accelerated carbon emissions.This has been deteriorating the ecological environment and endangering public physical and mental health.Abundant use of inorganic fertilizers during farming is linked with the accumulation of contaminants in agricultural soils, including arsenic, cadmium, fluorine, lead, and mercury.Pesticides, fungicides and weedicides are frequently found in the stream water in agricultural areas.These chemicals are also detected in the air of residential environments.Agrochemicals were traced even in human blood and adipose tissue.Various short-term or long-term health casualties are associated with agrochemicals, including dizziness, nausea, diarrhoea, skin, eye irritation, cancer, endocrine disruption, birth defects,etc..Inorganic inputs reduction and replacement with organic inputs with soil protection measures, crop rotation, intercropping, and waste resource utilization are the effective ways to solve the problem.However, farmers use these agrochemicals primarily due to economic benefits.The application of fertilizers and crop protection chemicals has been instrumental in increasing agricultural production, while pesticides, fungicides, and weedicides also reduce the cost of production from diseases, insect pests, and weeds.Organic agriculture practice involving the application of a set of cultural, biological, and mechanical practices is the best alternative that supports the cycling of on-farm resources, promotes ecological balance, and conserves biodiversity.Maintaining or enhancing soil and water quality; conserving wetlands, woodlands, and wildlife with avoiding the use of synthetic fertilizers, sewage sludge, irradiation, and genetic engineering are included in these practices.
Due to the lower cropping intensity under organic farming and the poor socioeconomic status of the farmers, the use of organic inputs is still very negligible in Bangladesh.Approximately only 0.1 % of the country’s total cultivable agricultural land is under organic agriculture.This has left an enormous vacuity to promote the use of organic inputs in agriculture.In addition to cereal and other cash crops, the use of organic inputs must be promoted in various fruit farming.Watermelon is one of the important fruits cultivated in Bangladesh besides mango, jackfruit, papaya, banana, etc.In 2020, around 12,251 ha of land was devoted to watermelon farming, where 254814 MT production was obtained.Because of high profitability and environmental suitability, it is grown extensively in the southern districts of Bangladesh.However, watermelon farmers extensively use different agrochemicals, i.e., fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides, weedicides and even some growth promoters.Since watermelon is a very demanded fruit in Bangladesh, assessing the farmers’ agrochemicals use is necessary.Besides, they are reluctant to use organic inputs for expected lower profit.Their willingness to adopt organic inputs need to be evaluated for ensuring sustainable agriculture in Bangladesh.Rabbany et al.conducted research on the cost of production analysis of watermelon.Yusuf et al.also reported profitability and adoption of watermelon technologies by farmers.Ibrahim et al.explored technical efficiency and its determinants in watermelon production.However, very little is known about agrochemicals usage by watermelon farmers.On the other hand, various studies were conducted on the use of organic inputs in various crops farming.Tur-Cardona et al.explored the acceptance of bio-based fertilizers in European countries.Salam et al.evaluated the impact of organic fertilizer on the yield and efficiency of rice.Rana et al.examined the organic vegetable cultivation attitude of the farmers.Again, very limited information was found that assessed the watermelon farmers’ willingness to adopt organic inputs.Hence, the present study was conducted to contribute to the literature by evaluating the watermelon farmers’ agrochemicals usage and assessing their willingness to adopt organic inputs.The objectives of the study are twofold.First, it assessed the agrochemical usage by the watermelon farmers.Second, it evaluated the farmers’ willingness to adopt organic inputs.The structure of this paper is as follows.The next section provides information on data and methods used to achieve the objectives.Section three presents the results and discusses the obtained findings.The last section provides conclusions with possible recommendations based on the findings.
Farmers in this study use various agrochemicals in the form of fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides, weedicides, growth promoters, etc.Fig.2 illustrates the farmers’ extent of using chemical fertilizers in watermelon farming.Maintaining soil fertility and soil nutrients is crucial for sustainable plant growth,grow bucket and it is usually done through applying fertilizers.Farmers in this study mainly used Urea, TSP, MoP, DAP, Gypsum, Boron, and Zinc fertilizers for watermelon.Urea provides necessary nitrogen to plants that help vegetative growth and aids the photosynthesis process.In watermelon farming, the farmers use four split applications of Urea during tillage, ten days before planting, 10-15 days after planting, and during and at the time of first flowering.Results revealed that about 72.5 % of farmers applied Urea above recommended dose while only about 5 % followed recommended dose.Similarly, most of the farmers used the above recommended doses of TSP.TSP is a popular source of phosphorus, and it helps with the growth and the development of the root system.Two doses of TSP are applied in watermelon farming, i.e., during tillage and ten days before planting.Urea and TSP are two of the three most used fertilizers by the farmers in Bangladesh.This could happen due to the negative effect of notable price reduction of fertilizers by following a universal subsidy policy in the country over the decade.Islam and Hossain also reported farmers tendency to overuse these fertilizers.MoP provides potassium to the plants, assisting the growth of strong stems and helping build the plants’ disease resistance.In the case of MoP, watermelon farmers apply it in four splits with Urea.It was found that most of the farmers were below recommended doses of MoP, while 38.3 % used above recommended doses.On the other hand, Diammonium Phosphate usage was under dose for most of them , while 35.8 % used its overdose.DAP is highly soluble and provides temporary alkalization of pH of the soil solution around the fertilizer granule, which aids better phosphorus uptake.Although about 31.7 % of them applied the recommended doses of Gypsum, the majority were overdosing.Contrarily, more than half of them did not apply Boron and Zinc, while most of the farmers using them were following the recommended dose.Farmers apply plant protection chemicals, i.e., pesticides, fungicides, weedicides, etc.in order to prevent diseases, infestation, and weeds in expectation of increased production.The usage extent of these chemicals by watermelon farmers in this study is elicited in Fig.3.It was observed that most of them used overdoses of pesticide following 35.8 % using below recommended dose.In the case of fungicide, about 70.8 % of farmers applied above recommended doses.Although most farmers did not use weedicide as they manage weed manually, about 12.5 and 23.3 % applied recommended and below recommended doses, respectively.Besides, farmers used growth promoters for sweeter and bigger-sized fruits.It was found that the majority had been using it in overdoses.Overall, farmers are overusing chemical inputs, which can be devastating for the public health, environment and especially their own health.Farmers in Bangladesh usually seek advice on pesticide use from dealers or retailers in their local market, who mostly have superficial knowledge on different inputs because of easier accessibility.Another plausible reason could be the increase in the availability of several brands of chemical inputs in the market, which was also reported in the study by Rahman.The easily availed different chemical inputs at local markets with misleading advertising might confuse the farmers who are mostly illiterate.The factors influencing the adoption of agrochemicals by the watermelon farmers were identified using a Tobit regression model.The results indicate that the education of the farmers exerted a significant and positive influence over the adoption of agrochemicals.It implies that farmers who are more educated use the chemicals better than their counterparts.Farmers with higher years of schooling have better access to information and analytical capabilities, enabling them to use the chemicals more sensibly.The finding confirms the results of Yigezu et al.and Prodhan and Khan.Farming experiences of the watermelon farmers influenced their use of chemicals significantly and positively.Experienced farmers tend to have better knowledge about the crops’ required doses that prevent the overdoseof chemicals.The same echoes were found in the studies of Nnadi and Akwiwu and Rahman and Haque.However, farm size held by the farmers illustrates a significant but negative effect on their use of agrochemicals indicating that small farms used these chemicals better than large ones.